5 Stats you need to know about GEO and AI Visibility for your 2026 marketing strategy

If you’re still measuring your organic performance like it’s 2018, (clicks, sessions, last-click ROAS), you’re going to have a bad time.

Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) and AI visibility have rewritten the rules. Your content is now feeding AI overviews, answer engines and AI browsers that never send a click… but absolutely shape which brands get remembered, trusted and shortlisted.

This isn’t a vibes-based prediction. We now have enough data to see what’s actually happening in the wild, and it’s brutal, especially for PPC strategy and performance marketers who’ve historically lived and died by CTR and CPC.

Below are five core stats that really matter, plus what they actually mean for your 2026 digital marketing strategy.

First: what do we mean by GEO and AI visibility?

Quick definitions so we’re on the same page:

• GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation)
• Optimising your content so it’s used and cited by AI systems, i.e. Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI browsers, etc. It’s less “how do I get the click?” and more “how do I become the answer?”
• AI visibility
• Your share of presence inside AI layers: how often you’re cited, summarised or recommended, even when the user never visits your site.
• Why you should careBecause:
  • Fewer people click organic or paid results.
  • When they do click, they’re often further down-funnel.
  • Google is actively blending paid formats into AI layers (AI Max, PMax), and those systems lean heavily on the same signals that drive GEO: structure, clarity, authority.

GEO is essentially “SEO for a world where the click is optional”.

Now, onto the numbers.

Stat #1: 80% of search users rely on AI summaries, and 60% of searches end without a click

Bain & Company’s 2025 research on AI search behaviour found that:

• Around 80% of search users now rely on AI-written summaries for at least 40% of their searches.
• Roughly 60% of searches on traditional engines end without the user clicking through to another site.
• They estimate this has reduced organic web traffic by 15–25%.

Source: Bain & Company, “Goodbye Clicks, Hello AI: Zero-Click Search Redefines Marketing”

That picture is reinforced by Rand Fishkin’s 2024 Zero-Click Search Study, which found that 58.5% of US Google searches and 59.7% of EU searches result in zero clicks, with only 360 (US) 374 (EU) clicks to the open web per 1,000 searches.

Source: SparkToro, “2024 Zero-Click Search Study”

Why this matters for GEO and PPC

1. “Traffic” is now the wrong primary KPI for a lot of queries.
2. For informational searches in particular, the user often gets everything they need from AI overviews or summaries. You may still be in the answer, but you’ll never see it in GA4.
3. You can’t treat zero-click as zero-value.
4. If your brand is repeatedly cited as the example, the recommended tool, or the explainer inside an AI answer, that influences shortlists and future branded search. GEO is about capturing that influence knowing you may not see a session.
5. PPC has to assume “assist mode” more often.Users might:
   • Start in AI search,
   • See you cited,
   • Then later search brand + solution and click your ad.
   • Attribution will under-credit the role of that initial AI exposure unless you deliberately model for it.

Stat #2: AI Overviews appear on 11%+ of queries, impressions up 49%, clicks down ~30%

BrightEdge’s 2025 analysis of Google AI Overviews (AIOs) found that:

• AI Overviews now appear on over 11% of Google queries, a 22% increase since launch.
• Total search impressions across content are up by more than 49% since AIOs launched.
• Click-throughs have declined by nearly 30% over the same period.

Source: BrightEdge, “One Year Into Google AI Overviews, BrightEdge Data Reveals Google Search Usage Increases by 49%”

In other words: users are searching more, seeing more of your content… and clicking less.

Why this matters for GEO and PPC

1. Visibility is migrating from “10 blue links” to the AI layer.
2. You can have more exposure (in terms of impressions and on-screen presence) but less traffic. If your reporting doesn’t separate “visible” from “clicked”, it will look like things are getting worse even as your brand becomes more prominent.
3. Classic SEO-only playbooks now under-report impact.A blog that used to drive 1,000 clicks/month might now:
   • Appear as a source in AI overview
   • Get fewer clicks
   • Still be doing meaningful brand-building work upstream.
   GEO says: optimise to be the quoted authority in that AI block, not just the #1 organic result beneath it.
4. For PPC, impression-rich / click-poor environments change bidding logic.On high-intent terms where AI Overviews sit on top, you’ll often see:
   • Fewer clicks,
   • But a higher proportion of those clicks turning into leads/pipeline, because the AI layer pre-qualifies intent.
   That can justify higher CPCs if you’re looking at profit per impression or pipeline per 1,000 impressions, not just CPA in isolation.

Stat #3: On AI Overview queries, organic CTR is down 61% and paid CTR is down 68%, unless you’re cited

Seer Interactive analysed 3,119 informational queries and 26M+ impressions across 42 organisations. Their September 2025 update found:

• Organic CTR for queries with AI Overviews dropped 61% (from 1.76% to 0.61%).
• Paid CTR on those queries dropped 68% (from 19.7% to 6.34%).
• Even on queries without AI Overviews, organic CTR fell 41% year-on-year.
• Crucially: brands cited in AI Overviews earned 35% more organic clicks and 91% more paid clicks than those not cited.

Source: Search Engine Land, “Google AI Overviews drive 61% drop in organic CTR, 68% in paid”

This is the GEO story in one stat: AI is hammering CTR overall, but brands that win citations in the AI layer get disproportionately better results from the clicks that are left.

Why this matters for PPC specifically

1. Your ad performance is increasingly tied to your organic/GEO footprint.If you’re cited in the AI Overview:
   • Users see your name in the explanation before they see the ad.
   • That pre-exposure likely boosts ad relevance and trust, hence the +91% paid clicks Seer found.
2. “Fix PPC in isolation” is becoming a fantasy.You can’t just tweak copy and bids. To improve PPC performance on informational and mid-funnel queries, you now need:
   • Content that answers the question succinctly.
   • Clear headings, bullets and FAQs that AI can lift.
   • Schema and internal linking that reinforce topical authority.
   That’s GEO work.
3. Budget allocation should follow where you’re already cited.If you know you’re being referenced in AI Overviews for a theme (e.g. “B2B PPC agency”, “CIS compliance for contractors”), it often makes sense to:
   • Lean harder into those terms with PPC,
   • Use landing pages that echo the summary,
   • Test higher bids because the combo of “cited + ad” can outperform raw CTR averages.

Stat #4: Keywords triggering AI Overviews jumped from 1.5% to ~32% in a year

Re:signal tracked one brand’s keyword set over 12 months and looked at how often AI Overviews appeared. They found:

• Only ~1.5% of organic keywords triggered an AI Overview in September 2024.
• By August/September 2025, around 32% of those keywords triggered an AI Overview.

Source: *Re:signal, “Measuring AI Overviews’ Impact: What our data reveals”

They also saw that for queries where they could track consistently:

• Impressions went up (e.g. +16% in one period)…
• …but clicks dropped by a third for the same queries.

So AI Overviews aren’t some fringe experiment anymore. They’re a default experience for a significant chunk of informational and long-tail queries, and they’re brutally efficient at hoarding attention.

Why this matters for GEO and channel mix

1. The “safe” long-tail is no longer safe.
2. Long, specific queries used to be a comfy SEO playground. Now they’re prime territory for AI summaries. If your GEO work is weak, long-tail becomes a place where you do all the content work and Google takes all the glory.
3. Your content strategy should be mapped explicitly to “AI-able” topics.AI Overviews skew towards:
   • How-tos
   • Comparisons
   • Definitions and frameworks
   • Multi-step explanations
   Those are exactly the queries where you want your frameworks, acronyms and mental models baked into the answer layer.
4. PPC has to adapt to more “pre-chewed” users.If a third of your long-tail queries are now fronted by AI Overviews, the user who actually clicks through is:
   • Better-informed
   • More sceptical
   • Closer to making a shortlist
   That demands landing pages that move quickly from recap (“Here’s what you already know”) to differentiation (“Here’s why we do this differently – and what to do next”).

What to do:

• Build an “AI Overview watchlist” of your highest-value non-brand queries.
• For each:
  • Document which formats win (list, table, short paragraph).
  • Rework your content into that structure.
  • Then align PPC ad copy and landing pages to the same language and structure, so the journey feels consistent.

Stat #5: LLMs now account for 5.6% of US desktop search, but Google still has 90%+ market share

It’s not just Google. Prosek Partners, summarising Semrush and other data, reports that as of Q2 2025:

• LLMs like ChatGPT and Perplexity account for over 5.6% of all US desktop search traffic, more than double the 2.48% share reported by the Wall Street Journal in June 2024.
• Despite that, Google still holds over 90% of the search market, with around 101 billion monthly visits in 2025, versus 5 billion for ChatGPT.

Source: Prosek Partners, “A new era of search: Trending towards a zero-click future, Rise of GEO, Why Google still matters”

So we’re not in “Google is dead” territory. We’re in “search is fragmenting and AI is eating behaviour around the edges” territory.

Why this matters for GEO and PPC

1. GEO is cross-platform by default.Your content might now be:
   • Cited in Google AI Overviews
   • Summarised in ChatGPT
   • Surfaced via AI browsers that sit on top of Chrome/Edge
   You don’t get to pick which one your user starts with. You do get to decide how easy your site is to crawl, summarise and quote.
2. PPC planning can’t ignore AI-native surfaces.Today, your paid budgets are still mostly:
   • Google Search / PMax
   • Meta
   • LinkedIn
   But as AI search engines commercialise (and Google bakes more AI into search ads – AI Max, etc.), your variables become:
   • Which AI surfaces do my ICPs actually use?
   • Where do paid formats exist or emerge first?
   • Is my brand already being recommended organically in those ecosystems?
3. Brand and authority become the real moat.When LLMs are aggregating from multiple sources, they tend to overweight:
   • Well-known domains
   • Clear, structured explanations
   • Content that aligns across multiple touchpoints (site, PR, thought leadership)
   That is GEO in a nutshell: building a content environment that AI keeps coming back to.

Bringing it together: what these stats really say

If we strip the numbers back, they’re all telling you the same story:

1. Clicks are down. Visibility isn’t.
2. AI layers are swallowing a growing slice of user attention, but they still need someone’s content to fuel them. GEO is how you make sure it’s yours.
3. Being cited matters as much as being ranked.
4. Seer’s data on the uplift for cited brands (35% more organic clicks, 91% more paid clicks on AIO queries) is the clearest argument for GEO you’ll ever get. If you’re not being quoted, you’re gifting that uplift to a competitor.
5. PPC and GEO are now joined at the hip.
   • GEO shapes who gets seen and trusted in AI answers.
   • PPC converts the fraction of those users who still click.
   • Treating them as separate disciplines is increasingly just an organisational convenience, not a reflection of how the SERP works.
6. Measurement has to grow up.
   • Keep your CPA, ROAS and pipeline metrics, they still matter.
   • But layer in AI-era KPIs: share of answer, citation rate, impressions in AI-rich SERPs, profit per 1,000 impressions, not just per click.

Final thought

GEO isn’t a shiny new acronym to bolt on to your strategy deck. It’s basically an admission that:

Search is becoming a conversation, and we need to be the expert that keeps getting quoted.

If you build for that reality, structurally sound content, clear POVs, strong authority signals and PPC that complements the AI layer rather than fighting it, you don’t just survive the zero-click world. You quietly own more of it than your competitors realise.

‍